Your Friend The Rat

Apparently a new Pixar short – their first with extensive 2-D traditional animation – will available on the Ratatouille DVD and Blu-Ray Discs (on sale November 6th). The short was directed by Jim Capobianco, who says he was particularly inspired by Ward Kimball, and was written by Jeff Pidgeon and Alexander Woo.

Looks like a similar style to the end-credits on Ratatouille (which I loved) .

The link to the article on Sci-Fi.com above says this:

“We had to be kind of smart and think of ways to put this together,” Capobianco told a group of reporters at Pixar’s headquarters in Emeryville, Calif., on Oct. 29. That meant finding people who could do the traditional animation, drawn with pencils on paper.”

Pencils on paper ? How about that .

Aleks Vujovic

Ooh yeah, saw that on the Pixar campus a few weeks ago but back then it was still secret.

It’s a wonderful short, I hope they branch out of that type of material, because they do a wonderful job on traditional animation.

The end credits of RATATOUILLE took my breath away, and hopefully this will do the same. I just looked at the images on Animated-News. I don’t like that still of 3-D Remy and Emile. Their expressions look bored and vacant. Hopefully, the actual short will prove otherwise.

Can’t wait to see it.

Marc G.

Wow wow wow. I am so jazzed for that. Pixar’s 2D concept art has always been great, I can’t wait to see it move.

Ned Brooks

Pixar does a great job with 2D. Remember the end credits of Monsters Inc.? Great design, timing and showmanship. Same is true of the end credits of Ratatatouille. This short should be right up there. Good animation works regardless of technique.

“Animated News says the short is Blu-ray exclusive – can anyone confirm or deny this?”

Thanks for asking this question! I went and pulled the e-mail I got out of my Trash folder and realized it’s not just on Blu-Ray so I have updated my entry at Animated News accordingly. The e-mail I got with the stills in it started out by saying:

“Happy Halloween!

HereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a few RATATOUILLE treats Ã¢â‚¬“ some new photos from the brand new short ‘Your Friend the Rat,’ exclusive to the RATATOUILLE DVD and Blu-Ray (11.6)”

Sean

I’ve seen this 11-minute short a few times now, and it is amazing. It’s a “documentary” about the history of Rats, skewed to a rat’s point of view, of course. It’s made up of some traditional hand drawn animation, some After Effects puppeted stuff (like the end credits), stop motion, pixelated chalk board drawings, and even a bit of CG! It’s wonderful that Pixar is producing animation of all types, and I hope for a lot more of it in the future… they’re really good at it.

“ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a Golden Book based on an animated short? IsnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t that somewhat unprecedented?”

No, there’s also a very nice Little Golden Book for Jack-Jack Attack.

Andy

The short is available on the DVD and rumour has it that commentaries for this and Cars will be Blu-Ray only, Your Friend The Rat also has a very cool 3-D stop motion sequence which I loved and Teddy Newton’s style is plastered all over the film.

Sorry, there is no commentary for Your Friend the Rat on the Blu-Ray disc. We recorded some but it will more then likely be on a future shorts compilation. The production design was led by Nate Wragg, with Teddy Newton doing the character design, with the help of Bob Scott and Scott Morse handled backgrounds. An amazing team. I can’t wait for you all to see it.

We are lucky, here in Hong Kong: the DVD was already in the shops yesterday. “Your friend the rat” is excellent, I hope that Pixar will continue these experiments between the 2D and 3D in a 60’s spirit. And we learn things about the norvegian rat. Who knew the norvegian rats ? One more good reason to buy this DVD.

Good “crossed”-interviews between the Chef Thomas Keller and Brad Bird, but no commentaries at all in this hong kongese version.